232 | MARCH 2003 | VOLUME 4 www.nature.com/reviews/neuro
PERSPECTIVES
even do this when induced to imagine the
experiences.Large changes in autobiography
can be achieved quickly. Attempts to distin-
guish the false memories from true ones have
occasionally shown statistical differences,such
as differences in confidence, vividness or
amount of detail
17
,or differences in lateralized
brain potentials
18,19
.For example,in the hot-
air balloon study
16
the real memories were
expressed with much more confidence than
the fake ones.In most studies, any differences
between true and false memories are observed
only when comparing large groups of true
and false memories, and these differences are
typically too small to be useful for classifying a
single autobiographical memory report as
true or false. Psychological science has not yet
developed a reliable way to classify memories
as true or false. Moreover, it should be kept in
mind that many false memories have been
expressed with great confidence.
Implications for society
While researchers continue to investigate false
memories, it is evident that there are already
lessons to be learned.The fact that the memo-
ries of victims and witnesses can be false or
inaccurate even though they believe them to
be true has important implications for the
legal system and for those who counsel or treat
victims of crimes.
Some psychotherapists use techniques that
are suggestive (along the lines of,“you don’t
remember sexual abuse, but you have the
symptoms, so let’s just imagine who might
have done it”).These can lead patients to false
beliefs and memories, causing great damage to
the patients themselves and to those who are
accused. In one Illinois case, psychiatrist
Bennett Braun was accused by his patient,
Patricia Burgus, of using drugs and hypnosis
to convince her that she possessed 300 person-
alities,ate meat loaf made of human flesh and
was a high priestess in a satanic cult
20
.By some
estimates, thousands of people have been
harmed in similar ways by well-meaning
providers who apply a ‘cure’ that ends up
being worse than the disease
21
.Law enforce-
ment interrogations that are suggestive can
lead witnesses to mistaken memories, even
ones that are detailed and expressed with con-
fidence. Hundreds of people have been
harmed by witnesses who made a mistake that
could have been avoided
22,23
.Of course,even
before the police arrive on the scene,witnesses
talk to one another and cross contamination
can occur. I personally witnessed this when I
entered a shop in Cambridge,Massachusetts,
moments after a robbery had occurred and
before the police arrived.In the immediate
aftermath,customers and employees shared
remembered about their encounter with Bugs
Bunny, 62% remembered shaking his hand
and 46% remembered hugging him. A few
people remembered touching his ears or tail.
One person remembered that he was holding
a carrot.The scenes described in the adver-
tisement never occurred,because Bugs Bunny
is a Warner Bros. cartoon character and
would not be featured at a Disney property.
Other ‘impossible’ memories have been
recently planted in British students
15
.The false
event was “having a nurse remove a skin sam-
ple from my little finger.”This medical proce-
dure was not one that was carried out in the
United Kingdom, according to extensive inves-
tigation of health policy records.After guided
imagination, many subjects came to remember
the non-existent procedure occurring in their
childhood.Some embellished their reported
memory with significant detail such as,“There
was a nurse and the place smelled horrible.”
One of the cleverest and most powerful
techniques for planting highly implausible
false memories involves the use of fake photo-
graphs
16
.Subjects were shown a falsified pho-
tograph that was made up of a real photograph
of the subject and a relative pasted into a proto-
type photograph of a hot-air balloon
(FIG.1).
Family members confirmed that the event had
never occurred.Subjects were shown the fake
photograph and asked to tell “everything you
can remember without leaving anything out,
no matter how trivial it may seem.”There were
two further interviews,and by the end of the
series 50% of the subjects had recalled,partially
or clearly, the fictitious hot-air balloon ride.
Some embellished their reports with sensory
details of a hot-air balloon ride during child-
hood that had never occurred.For example,
one subject said “I’m still pretty certain it
occurred when I was in sixth grade at, um,the
local school there … I’m pretty certain that
mum is down on the ground taking a photo.”
16
These studies,and many more like them,
show that people can develop beliefs and
memories for events that definitely did not
happen to them.They can do this when fed
strong suggestions — such as “your family
told us about this event”or “look at this pho-
tograph of you from childhood”. They can
of the event,such as the false detail that a man
had curly rather than straight hair. Many of
these people later claimed that they had seen a
curly-haired person
7
. Studies such as this
showed how leading questions or other forms
of misinformation could contaminate the
memories of witnesses about events that they
had recently experienced
8
.
In the past decade, the challenges have
become greater. Newer studies showed that
you could do more than change a detail here
and there in someone’s memory.You could
actually make people believe that a childhood
experience had occurred when in fact it never
happened.Examples include being lost in a
shopping mall for an extended period of time,
being rescued by a lifeguard, or surviving a
vicious animal attack
9–12
.How is this possible?
In our studies,we enlist family members to
help us to persuade their relatives that the
events occurred.This method has led about a
quarter of our subjects to believe that they
were lost in a shopping mall for an extended
period of time,and were ultimately rescued by
an elderly person and reunited with their fam-
ilies.In other studies,we engaged people in
guided imagination exercises.We asked people
to imagine for a minute that as a child they
had tripped and broken a window with their
hand.Later, many of them became confident
that the event had occurred.In other studies,
we encouraged people to read stories and tes-
timonials about witnessing demonic posses-
sion,and even these raised confidence that this
rather implausible event had happened.
One recurring issue for memory distor-
tion research is the question of whether the
events being reported after such a manipula-
tion might have actually happened.Perhaps
the subject did break a window but had for-
gotten about it — the imagination exercise
might have triggered a true memory rather
than planting a false one.To prove that false
memories can be insinuated into memory by
these suggestive techniques,researchers have
tried to plant memories that would be highly
implausible or impossible.For example, one
set of studies asked people to evaluate adver-
tising copy. They were shown a fake print
advertisement that described a visit to
Disneyland and how they met and shook
hands with Bugs Bunny.Later, 16% of these
subjects said that they remembered meeting
and shaking hands with Bugs Bunny
13
.In fol-
low-up research carried out by Grinley in my
laboratory, several presentations of fake
advertisments involving Bugs Bunny at
Disneyland resulted in 25–35% of subjects
claiming to have met Bugs Bunny
14
.
Moreover, when these subjects were subse-
quently asked to report precisely what they
“One of the cleverest and
most powerful techniques for
planting highly implausible
false memories involves the
use of fake photographs.”